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Where to go in April 2012

Canada's tourist industry received a boost last summer on the back
of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's royal tour. And this year,
the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, on 15 April,
may also cause a surge in visitor numbers, particularly in Nova
Scotia and the port city of Halifax, where 150 of those who
perished were laid to rest. Most were crew, stewards or steerage
passengers. Only two, a Cuban named Servando Ovies Rodríguez and
William Harrison from Wallasey near Liverpool, were travelling in
first-class cabins. The city's fine Maritime Museum of the Atlantic
has the world's largest collection of objects recovered from the
ship.

For anyone confident that lightning doesn't strike twice, Miles
Morgan Travel (www.titanicmemorialcruise.co.uk) is organising
two Titanic Memorial Cruises: a 12-night voyage embarks from
Southampton on 8 April, calling at Cobh, County Cork, en route to
Halifax; and another departs from New York on the 10th. Those who
feel safer on dry land might prefer to stay at the boutique
Cambridge Suites Hotel (www.cambridgesuiteshalifax.com; doubles from
about £120) in downtown Halifax.

Don't restrict yourself to staying in town, though, because the
real appeal of Nova Scotia is its undeveloped coast, with
extraordinary rock formations and glorious colours. Especially
spectacular is the all-but-deserted Eastern Shore and Bay of Fundy.
Geological formations here are reckoned to date back to the
Mesozoic and Palaeozoic eras, before the rifting of the
supercontinent Pangaea. The tides are among the highest in the
world, and there are
15 species of whale to watch.